


Gonna Find Another Place (maybe one I can stand)

by singlesrvngfrend



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-13
Updated: 2011-10-13
Packaged: 2017-10-24 14:07:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/264312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singlesrvngfrend/pseuds/singlesrvngfrend
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nate is finishing school at Harvard, Brad is still in Oceanside, and long distance sucks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gonna Find Another Place (maybe one I can stand)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the gk_remix. Huge thanks to nightanddaze (who also beta’d for me EXTREMELY last minute) and amberlynne, without whom this would never have been written, and to invaderwitch for a second helpful beta. This is the first thing I’ve finished in a long time, and these girls know how rough things have been for me lately. Thanks guys—this one is definitely for you ♥ Title robbed (obvsly) from Modest Mouse. All errors are mine.
> 
> Comments are ♥

“Spread your legs.”

Nate’s not really awake, but following orders is something he can do pretty much unconscious, so he opens the space between his thighs.

“Wider.”

There’s a hint of something hidden in Brad’s voice, and Nate tries to focus, waking himself up and opening his eyes.

The mattress between his legs is occupied by Brad’s knees, and Nate has apparently wakened just in time to catch him rolling on a condom. Brad scoots forward, his own knees opening up and sliding underneath Nate’s thighs, and he pushes two fingers into Nate. It’s harsh, rough, and Nate thinks they must be barely slicked with the lube from the condom. He sucks in a breath.

“The fuck, Brad—”

Brad leans down and kisses Nate quiet, except instead of kissing he’s biting at Nate’s mouth, rough scrapes and clamps of teeth on his bottom lip, the corner of his mouth, his tongue. Nate takes a long breath, the anger beginning to simmer in his belly, and he feels Brad’s chest heaving against his, the rapid, shallow pants a counterpoint to his own measured breaths.

Brad’s eyes are open, unblinking, focused on Nate. He swipes his thumb softly across Nate’s balls, and Nate’s hips jerk in surprise. His cock jumps, too, and Brad moves his thumb forward to rub across the base, barely half-hard but stiffening eagerly against Brad’s touch, predictable in every way that Brad is not.

Nate clenches his teeth but doesn’t make a noise when Brad pulls his fingers out too quickly, merely adjusts when he replaces them with his cock, the flared head pushing him wide open. Brad is quiet and ungentle, fucking Nate with deep, controlled thrusts, his hands braced above Nate’s shoulders keeping his elbows locked.

He doesn’t kiss Nate; doesn’t moan his name or touch his skin or rub their bodies together for maximum contact. When his rhythm begins to stutter, he mashes his face into Nate’s throat, biting and sucking at the skin there, marking the place where neck and shoulder slope together. The feel of Brad’s tongue on his skin, wet and strong, pulls the come from Nate like one of Brad’s reluctant smiles.

Nate cries out, guttural and unexpected, and Brad spreads his knees wider, fucking Nate harder, faster, through his own orgasm and beyond, until Nate pushes him away, raw and exhausted.

Three hours later, as Nate drops Brad at Logan International, he can still feel Brad, a burning ache between his legs.

Two days after that, when the soreness is just beginning to fade, Nate concedes that this was the point, and the ache shifts to his chest, where it usually resides in Brad’s absence.

&

The trees along the Charles River have faded from their brilliant autumn hues into dull browns. Nate follows the bike path that parallels the river’s edge beneath the leaves, hanging with wet weight. His sneakers slap against the path as he runs, the impact echoing through his legs and intensifying in the increasing chill of the late-fall air.

It makes him think of California’s relentlessly sunny days, the year-round warmth that gilds Brad’s skin in caramel and copper tones.

The nights are getting longer and the cold is getting deeper. Nate thinks about visiting Brad, but somehow he never makes it to buying a plane ticket.

&

"Tequila shots are the best for warming up," Maria insists. She hands Nate one then clinks them together, and Nate laughs when she makes the typical scrunched-up face that girls make when they take shots. He swallows his own, eyes burning, and thinks that Maria's wrong.

Tequila is for hot nights, Brad and Nate sprawled in cheap plastic beach chairs, sand clinging to everything. It means skin sticky with lime juice and grainy with salt. It's muddled in Nate's mind with the taste of cock and come, the sound of moans and the ocean, the smell of sweat and motorcycle engine oil.

It’s a good insulator, though, when Nate steps outside into the bitter Cambridge air a few shots later. Maria stumbles out after him, heels clicking on the sidewalk, barely muffled by the snow piled along the edges of everything.

Her apartment isn’t far, and her bed is warm and soft, like Maria herself. He kisses her pale skin, mouths slowly along her throat and collarbone, before slipping his hand into her elegant wool pants. She digs her heels into his calf and buttock once, absently, before remembering to slip them off.

They fuck quickly, cocooned in white sheets and a thick down comforter. Afterward she slips on a jewel-toned silk robe and moves toward the dim kitchen. “Hungry?”

“Yeah, actually.” He smiles, charmed by how practical graduate students are. She produces a tray of sharp cheeses and crackers, and they wash it down with spicy Chilean wine, comfortable together on the worn living room furniture.

Maria ends up in his lap after the wine, leisurely riding him in search of her own pleasure, her dark hair a fragrant curtain around their faces. She kisses him sweetly before offering him a shower, clearly intending to spend the rest of the night alone.

Nate takes the T to his less fashionable neighborhood in Allston, the only other rider a frazzled boy reading from an anatomy textbook. He thinks about the coming Monday, how Maria will probably smile at him in class and ask about the rest of his weekend. How blasé everything would be, their physical encounter as commonplace and inconsequential as the weather.

The desert had seemed simpler, but it was fraught with complications only Brad could arouse. Life had actually been better that way.

&

The tinny sound of _Ice Ice Baby_ is muffled by Nate’s pocket, and he waits until he’s inside his front door before taking out his cell phone and sighing at the picture of Brad half-smirking from the screen.

“My fucking nose is sunburned.” Brad doesn’t sound pissed, he sounds like he’s fucking _gloating_. “It was 86 damn degrees today.”

“Yes, Brad, I’m sure that was awful.” Nate’s jeans are soggy from the knee down, late-season wet snow enough of a surprise that he didn’t think to carry an umbrella or wear his snow boots. “I’m sure you’re aware of how to apply sunscreen.”

“You would think my nose would forget how to sunburn at some point.”

Nate remembers the way Brad’s nose was always pink even beneath his desert tan. “You would think.”

There’s some shuffling and Nate hears yelling that he wishes had been a little further in the background. _Is that Fick? Fick you fucking pussy, where the fuck are you? We’ve run out of beer and we need our fearless leader! Save us, LT!_

“I need pest control,” Brad monotones.

Nate slumps into his couch, feeling pissy and unable to keep it from his tone. “What is Ray doing there?”

Brad sighs. “He’s taken over my abode for some whiskey-tango animal sacrifice involving charcoal and weak beer.”

Nate understands the words, but not the reasoning. “You’re having a cookout?”

“ _Ray_ is having a cookout, it just happens to be occurring at my house, for reasons only Ray understands. And you should feel loved, because he won’t stop asking why you’re not here.”

There’s an undertone to Brad’s words that Nate doesn’t miss; he wasn’t supposed to. “You didn’t explain to Ray that Boston is not a cab ride away?”

“I can’t explain anything to Person. I don’t speak redneck so we mostly communicate using hand signals.”

All Nate wants is a hot shower, flannel pajamas, and to stop having useless conversations with Brad where neither of them says anything they mean and nothing ever gets solved. They’d said more to each other with silence and lingering looks than they have in the past year of phone calls, texts, and uncomfortable visits.

“I have to go. Enjoy your barbecue.”

He hangs up, but not even Ray’s insistent yelling can cover the impatient noise he hears from Brad before the line goes dead.

&

The sun is hot and Nate’s shoulders are a mess of freckles. Maryland in the summer is near intolerable after Boston’s cooler northern clime, but at least Nate’s parents live close to the coast, so a jump in the ocean is only a half-hour drive away.

The Atlantic is cooler than the muggy air, but still feels practically like bathwater and dries immediately from his skin to leave an itchy white residue. Nate can’t help but remember the way the Pacific never warmed, even after weeks of relentlessly hot, sunny days.

There was a time when Nate reminisced about his Maryland summers. In Iraq he’d often wished to be exactly here doing exactly this. That he’s reminiscing now about a time and place he’d only occupied for a matter of weeks does not escape him as being ironic.

Nate’s not fighting a war anymore, as a Marine or otherwise. There’s nothing stopping him from being where he apparently wants to be.

&

It’s night, and Nate is watching moths fling themselves at the bare bulb above the back door. The heat of the day is finally fading into the inky darkness. Nate groans and stretches his legs, pleasantly sore and tired. He’s learning to surf, and though it’s not going very well, it’s at least a lot of fun, the most enjoyable way he’s found to get exercise in the autumn sun.

Nate is nearly asleep sitting up when he finally hears noise inside the house. The screen door opens to Brad with a popsicle stick dangling between his teeth, rustling through a white plastic bag with the simple words _Thank You!_ in an italic blue font.

Brad pulls out a pack of frozen peas and drops the bag on the tiny concrete patio. He straddles Nate’s chair, easing his knees to either side of Nate’s hips. The crappy plastic chair wobbles, and Brad slaps the peas on Nate’s raw, sore shoulder.

“You’re a shitty surfer, Captain.” Brad’s voice is soft and lacking any edge. “You should give it up.”

“You’re a shitty teacher, Staff Sergeant; maybe you should give that up.” Nate wants to smile, but Brad is too close, and his concentration is scattered between Brad’s pink mouth and the heat of his thighs and groin over Nate’s.

Brad says something else, but Nate pays no attention, running his hands up and inside Brad’s shorts. When his fingertips reach the edge of Brad’s boxer-briefs, he stops talking abruptly and laughs. Nate looks up, wanting to see that rare expression on Brad’s face.

“You are a particularly single-minded individual.”

“Seems like this would be a pretty good thing when I’m thinking about how hard I’m about to fuck you.”

“Luckily I know you’re a man of action,” Brad murmurs before biting Nate on the neck, slicking the hurt with his tongue. He shuffles off of Nate, the chair juddering beneath them. He pulls Nate up after him, and moves in very close, in his face and looming over Nate.

“After you, sir.”

Nate does smile, this time, biting his lip and looking up at Brad through his lashes. He reaches down and adjusts himself, knuckles pressing into Brad’s dick, hard and reaching toward Nate inside his briefs. Brad is close behind him when he enters the dim house, turning off the light behind them to chase away the cluster of moths.

&

Nate’s just as sore when he wakes up late the next morning, but he smiles when he thinks that the burn in his thighs has to be less than what Brad will be feeling when he regains consciousness. Nate’s going to use it to convince Brad to skip surfing lessons. He’d much rather stay inside and have Brad fuck him instead.

Outside, the sun is hot, but Brad’s room is dim and cool as Nate rolls over into Brad: long, lean, salty and musky. For the first time in as long as he can remember, Nate falls back asleep in the middle of the day, uncaring about the world beyond his front door.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [(Podfic of) Gonna Find Another Place (Maybe One I Can Stand) by Singlesrvngfrend](https://archiveofourown.org/works/744372) by [chemm80](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chemm80/pseuds/chemm80)




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